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Meg Reid 🦦

@megireid.bsky.social

3.7K followers 1.1K following 2.4K posts

Executive Director / Hub City Writers Project Publisher / @hubcitypress.bsky.social Canadian in the South 🍁 Happy to be on your podcast, etc! www.megireid.com

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Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · Nov 12

Hey new folks! I'm a publisher / writer / designer who runs a publisher grounded in place and community (@hubcitypress.bsky.social) and advocates for small, local, diverse, and authentic in direct response to the consolidation and corporatization of nearly everything in the book industry.

Lead titles from Hub City presses spring season including WORLD WITHOUT END by Martha Park and PLUM by Andy Anderegg

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Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 7h

!!!!!!!!!

ℳatt @matttomic.bsky.social · 9h

A pilot out in Nova Scotia seems to have had some fun yesterday.

www.flightaware.com/live/flight/...

C-GZPT Flight Tracking and History - FlightAware

Flight status, tracking, and historical data for C-GZPT including scheduled, estimated, and actual departure and arrival times.

www.flightaware.com

Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 10h

It's so weird that "political outsider" is considered a worse thing to be than a political insider

Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 11h

Also, most importantly, we get paid on a 3-4 month lag with our distributor (ie I'm getting paid for May sales this month). Direct sales on the website land immediately in our bank account and help fund payroll, utilities, and all the other immediate needs of an organization.

Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 11h

If you talk to almost any small press out there you'll hear that their best sales year was likely 2020-2021. Were people reading more because of the pandemic? Absolutely. But the real change was the huge increase in DTC sales.

Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 11h

(We pay our royalties on list so Aubrey would make the same amount regardless of the account but the 40% increase in income coming to the press helps fund future books and writers.)

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Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 11h

this is so good!!!!!!!!!! I love indie bookstores and bookshop.org but this is why, if you can, it's so sustaining to buy direct from small presses!

Aubrey Hirsch @aubreyhirsch.bsky.social · 14h

Did you know that if you buy my book on Amazon, Jeff Bezos makes 5 times as much as I do on each copy sold? Sharing some behind-the-scenes book math on why buying directly from presses is best for EVERYONE (except Bezos) in my newsletter today! aubreyhirsch.substack.com/p/book-math

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Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 11h

Janet's father was US Attorney for the state of Maine. When they say "untested" they mean, "the other candidate doesn't come from an esteemed political family."

Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 11h

I grew up with Janet! My sister worked for her brother! But people underestimate how deeply red most of Maine is because they've only been to Portland. Without enthusiasm, it'll difficult for a dem to overcome--esp one that republicans hate as much as Mills. (Also, god bless ranked choice voting.)

The New York Times @nytimes.com · 17h

Breaking News: Janet Mills, the Democratic governor of Maine, is running for Senate, aiming to unseat Senator Susan Collins, a Republican.

Gov. Janet Mills of Maine to Run for Senate, Aiming at Senator Susan Collins

A two-term Democratic governor, Ms. Mills called herself “battle tested” in an interview. But she faces a Democratic primary before she can challenge the Republican incumbent.

nyti.ms

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Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 13h

like, it's all just so silly

Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 13h

Doesn't that sort of reveal everything that they are saying the protestors are paid actors BEFORE the protest has even occurred?

Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 16h

one of the reasons they're so mad at "no kings" is that they thought they were going to get a different kind of protest. they *want* the black bloc to be out there fighting with the cops. those are the images they've been trying to generate from "go." instead--

newrepublic.com/article/2016...

MAGA Rage at “No Kings” Boils Over—and It Quickly Backfires on Trump

As Trump allies smear the coming protests, a good writer on MAGA skewers the absurdity of these attacks on large swaths of Americans—and explains why our best recourse will be to turn out in force.

newrepublic.com

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Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 1d

and this isn't really literary but HP irrevocably damaged the culture because it not only allowed but encouraged a generation of readers to not mature and we now have legions of adults who still want to read children's books.

Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 1d

(i also think A LOT of contemporary poetry........is bad)

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 1d

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

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Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 1d

If your agent adds a prologue to your slow book so that editors will think it's more compelling, I will almost certainly delete that prologue.

Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 1d

epigraphs are unnecessary. prologues are rarely necessary.

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 1d

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

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Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 1d

I want to add my oft-repeated story oh when the ink used on a small reprint smelled kind of like bananas and that made it into MULTIPLE goodreads reviews.

Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 1d

can you imagine the warehouse smell

Louie Stowell @louiestowell.bsky.social · 1d

I want everyone to the think of the poor production teams having to act on increasingly unhinged requests. They didn't ask for this. They don't deserve this. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

A book is being marketed with mayo-scented ink. Jealous? Me? | David Barnett

With the rise of TikTok and two-tier marketing budgets, something’s off in the world of publishing (and it’s not just the aroma), says author David Barnett

www.theguardian.com

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Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 1d

Agree 100%. I think a billion people signed up and started cranking out content (with AI help, I suspect) and now it's "I'm not selling anything and this is costing me a lot." Yeah, you just explained why traditional publishing exists.

Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 1d

It's hard to tell how widespread this is bc the threads algo is so intensely repetitive in what they feed you. I'm also seeing posts commenting on why authors are quitting. Threads specifically seems to have given new space for, and exacerbated, self-pub author anxiety and it's been wild to watch.

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Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 1d

self-pub authors of threads update for my bluesky writers: for some reason my feed is chock full of "I've had enough and am pulling my books down and retiring from writing!" posts. Reasons include: burnout, low/no sales, anti-blackness from KU consumers, delayed royalties from Amazon.

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Reposted by Meg Reid 🦦

Nora Reed (they/them ze/hir) @nora.zone · 4d

cry havoc and let slip the frogs of war

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Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 4d

You heard it first here: the It's Never My Fault Club is about to pivot to "immigrants gave us the measles."

Screenshot from South Carolina nextdoor post positing completely unsupported idea that immigrants brought measles into the country.

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Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 4d

you ever think about how weird email is? we're all basically sending texts from our computers, often with people we know well, yet still addressing and signing them like we're writing 18th century letters

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Reposted by Meg Reid 🦦

Nick Sturm @nicksturm.bsky.social · 4d

it's wild to imagine how publishing might be different if funding priorities in the Lit Program c. 1975 had shifted from (in their own terms) a "populist" model--$ to as many as possible--to an "elitist" model that builds capacity in a select set of independent publishers to counter commercial pubs

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Reposted by Meg Reid 🦦

Nick Sturm @nicksturm.bsky.social · 4d

Yes:

Poets & Writers was getting $300k from the NEA by 1980. Well before the decline era, no literary org will ever receive anything near this.

& literature has always been an outlier in the NEA. Funding levels went up in the growth era but are dwarfed by funding levels in disciplines like music

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Meg Reid 🦦 @megireid.bsky.social · 4d

wow, that sad little literature line!

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